Sunday, April 3, 2011
Nye's Poetry and Identity
Aside from the poem "Kindness" in which Nye shockingly but candidly (and I think wonderfully) connects all readers with the Indian on the side of the road who could be any one of us, find at least two other specific quotations from poems in the volume Words Under the Words in which Nye attempts to connect the reader to someone or a group of people Western culture has usually deemed as Other (in Said's terms --- i.e., Oriental, Asian, Eastern, on the margins, etc.). Please quote the passage and include the line numbers and the title of the poem, and interpret the lines. Thank you. Due date: Wednesday by 4:30 p.m.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
From: “The Garden of Abu Mahmoud”
ReplyDelete“of this Arab, but no more so / than everything / Across his valley the military / settlement gleamed white. / He said, “That’s where the guns live, / as simply as saying, it needs sun, a plant needs sun. (6-12)
These lines show the reader about the Arab world located in West Asia and North Africa. The Arabs are more accustomed to war, guns, and violence. They are used to seeing weapons, and they are not as afraid of weapons as Americans are. Nye explains that the Arab man said it simply, and she compares it to someone saying a plant needs sun. The man must of said it very nonchalantly. These lines show the reader how common weapons are in other parts of the world.
From: “Biography of an Armenian Schoolgirl”
“I have lived in the room of stone where voices become / bones buried under us long ago. Where you could dig / for centuries uncovering the same sweet dust” (1-3)
“What is the history of Europe to us if we cannot choose our own husbands? / Yesterday my father met with the widower, the man with no hair. / How will I sleep with him, I who have never slept away from my mother? (10-12)
These lines show the reader what it is like to be an Armenian female. What they are learning is not interesting and relevant. They are learning about things that other people have already discovered. I believe there is a connection with the Armenian schoolgirl and Americans today. Many young people in America do not feel like they are learning information that is interesting and useful. Students learn about the discoveries of the past, and they do repetitive work which is boring. The young girl has topics which she is interested in; however, they are not taught in her school.
When the Armenian schoolgirl speaks about marriage, it is very disturbing. This young girl is going to be forced to marry an old stranger with no hair. All the young girl knows is her family; she has never had relations with a male, and now she will be forced to have a sexual relationship with a complete stranger. As an American, it is painful to think of a young girl being forced into a relationship with a man she does not know or care for. The Armenian girl seems very smart, but very innocent; she seems helpless in her culture. These few lines show the reader so much about the Armenian culture. You feel as if you are in her shoes when you read the poem.
the poem shows Abu Mahmods insistence of survival though the surrounding mass caused by the Israeli occupation. it is a call for peace and love. the deep connection and love between him and his garden is the same that connect all Palestinians to their land and it also signifies their hope of returning. it is not a matter of being accustomed to weapons. it is a matter of one,s belonging and identity.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"My hands would learn the colors your hands know, /blue and purple, threaded together on the loom"(18-19 The Indian in the Kitchen). The line “My hands would learn the colors your hands know” tie the reader and the Indian woman together through experiencing what the Indian woman has experienced in her life (18 The Indian in the Kitchen). Knowing the colors blue and purple and threading them together is placing the reader in the Indian woman's life and they become one through this experience.
ReplyDelete"A young girl pushed forward toward the door/ I saw the bright nosegay of flowers she guarded carefully/ Vamos! And she handed me one perfect pink rose/ because we had noticed each other, and that was all"(34-39 Coming into Cuzco). The second line is powerful since the young girl is guarding her flowers, yet she gives a “perfect pink rose” to the woman (poet), the act of the young girl giving her the rose that she guarded so carefully connects both of them on the same level. Cuzco is a very poor town in Peru, so one may look down on the girl since she is poor; however, the symbol of the rose shows that we are all connected whether we are poor or rich, we all breathe the same air and we are all humans. This passage allows a reader to relate them self to the poet, who is engaging with the young girl, and in return, it allows the reader to relate and become one with the girl from Cuzco.
In the poem, The Shopper, Nye immediately tries to liken her to a Cuzco Indian, stating that "like an Indian woman of Cuzco attends the cathedral." She attempts to show us how when we shop, we obsess over something, mindlessly attempting to remind ourselves of what we have to get. It's the same way that devoted church goers constantly pray, repeating words that perhaps hold no more meaning but they simply recite due to necessity. In the rest of the poem she continues speaking about her private life, giving us a window into her daily routines and those that fill a spot for these routines.
ReplyDeleteIn another poem, Daily, she talks, or rather the poet narrates about his or her daily life. Though she does not allude to any specific person, the way in which she describes the day, and plots the facts out, helps me identify with what she is saying. As I read the short poem, I felt as though I was her shadow, following her on her daily routines, and I could see, with vivid imagination, each bit of the tasks she partook in throughout the day.
“Blood” (Poem can be found on page 121.)
ReplyDelete“A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page. / Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root / is too big for us. What flag can we wave? / I wave the flag of stone and seed, / table mat stitched in blue.” (17-21)
I interpreted these lines of Nye’s poem, “Blood,” as saying that we often read about misfortunes that are occurring in “other” areas of the world, but we find ourselves unable to relate to the tragedies because they are not directly happening to us. In an attempt to connect her audience to the Palestinian in the headline she asks the reader, “What flag can we wave?” In line 20, Nye describes her flag as one of “stone and seed,” which are elements of nature and the earth that all human-beings share. Her use of the color blue to describe the stitched table mat in her poem reminded me of the song in the background of the Elizabeth Alexander presentation yesterday (Regina Spektor’s “Blue Lips”) in which the color blue is used to unite all of humanity. Nye reminds the reader that whether the devastation has occurred right next door to us or oceans away we should feel for others because deep within every single one of us we are all the same.
“No One Thinks of Tegucigalpa” (Poem can be found on page 138)
“They don’t want to hear about Tegucigalpa because it makes / them feel like a catalogue of omissions.” (9-10)
“Think of the countries you have never / seen, the cities of those countries, start here, then ask: / How bad is it to dress in a cold room? How small your own / wish for a parcel of children? How remarkably invisible / this tear?” (20-24)
Nye’s poem, “No One Thinks of Tegucigalpa,” was undoubtedly one of my favorite pieces in the entire book, “Words Under Words.” I interpreted lines 9 and 10 as Nye saying that people choose not to hear about the suffering occurring in other parts of the world because it makes them feel a sense of guilt for neglecting to do anything about what is happening in those areas. As the poem reaches its concluding lines, Nye attempts to connect the hardships that people in other countries are facing to a universal audience. Nye finishes her poem with three questions, each with a very powerful meaning. I thought the significance of these final lines was that one person’s hurt can appear small from the outside, but it is our choice, as human-beings, to open our eyes and stop neglecting others' suffering in order to feel the immense amount of pain that is inside that one “invisible tear.”
One specific part from another poem that connects the reader to someone directly is in the poem “The Indian In The Kitchen.” Right away from reading the title of the poem the reader is already aware of what they are going to read about. “Her face is Central America—from the edges, oceans stretch out. Quietly, quietly, the years have left her, traveling by ship”(page 4, lines 1-4) I understand this part from the poem but then again I don’t because shouldn’t Indians be native to America? A face as Central America makes sense if meaning that may be tanned, and possibly the features are similar to those from Central America. “Quietly, quietly, the years have left her, traveling by ship” this makes me think that possibly the title is wrong because where by ship could the character be going or coming from? Another very important quote from this poem is line 1 in stanza 3, “listen, no one introduces us” that quote from the poem is very significant to the purpose of this blog when you wrote ‘deemed as other’. This quote shows that the person Nye is talking to wasn’t acknowledged. When you are introduced to people it’s in a sense like your important and you are wanted to get known about but apparently this “Indian in the kitchen” was not, most likely not even noticed in a presence at all.
ReplyDeleteAnother poem that I feel points out and connects the reader to a certain race or ethnicity is the poem “With the Greeks”. Just as the other poem I chose to elaborate on, the title is clear to the reader as to what the poem possibly could be about. The lines that stuck out to me the most were stanza 1 8-10(lines) “outline of a wheeling fish that says you are less alone than you like to think” I don’t know why these lines caught my attention so much but even after reading this poem multiple times I couldn’t help to wonder why Nye felt tis culture might feel lonely unless they had no company of others besides those as themselves which again connects to the main idea of this blog. Which was connecting the feeling, thoughts, or even the experiences of specific cultures to the reader throughout certain poems in this book.
Sarah Case
ReplyDeleteI chose to look at the poem “Defining White”. Nye in this poem cleverly discusses how humans over complicate and attempt to define colors and identities. In the following stanza I think Nye is trying to point out that we are all human and color should not stand in our way: “On the telephone no one knows what white is. My husband knows, he takes pictures. He has whole notebooks defining how white is white, is black, and all the gray neighborhoods in between”. The first line states that no one knows how to define white over the telephone, this co notates that color is visual, that race is skin deep. The second sentence reminds me of how little a photograph can say about an individual. The third line describes how humans categorize colors, and that the colors that are not distinctly one or the other (gray) are lumped into another category. The word she uses neighborhoods is an insight to understanding that Nye is talking about more than just the color white, she’s getting to the root of human nature and our obsessive need to categorize. I think that all of Nye’s poems create a feeling of togetherness and unity as a species. Each and every human goes through their own struggles.
In Nye's poem "Kindness" she connects all readers with the Indian on the side of the road by specifically pointing out that compared to our culture in America Western Culture has to work hard for what they get. They literally drop dead working. Living conditions in their culture are quite different from ours. The sad thing about this is people don't realize the hardships that people of other cultures have to endure in order to survive. Nye writes "the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever." Nobody does anything to help those in need in other cultures, everyone is very ignorant.
ReplyDeleteAnother poem which stood out to me with a similar meaning is the poem "The Words Under the Words"
"My grandmother's days are made of bread,
a round pat-pat and the slow baking.
She waits by the oven watching a strange car
circle the streets. Maybe its her son,
lost to America. More often, tourists,
who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines"
This passage related to the poem "Kindness" because i think it shows that people from outside this culture does not realize the hardships that people of that culture endure. When she talks about the dead Indian by the side of the road she writes,
"You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive."
The Indian worked hard to stay alive yet barely made it. People outside of that culture do not realize what it takes for some people to survive, to work so hard.
“Martita y Luisa”
ReplyDelete“Why does the Chinese woman/ with a bandanna knotted on her head/ push a cartload of cabbages/ six miles everyday?/ They will wilt if she does not get there.” (Lines 20-24)
I think these lines are important to human nature and culture because it shows the will to survive. The Chinese woman is bringing her cabbage to the market to sell in order to make a living. I remember seeing pictures of China when I was younger and the streets were flooded with people hauling wheelbarrow like carts around full of vegetables in an attempt to sell what stock they had. Reading this part of the poem brought that to mind so I think it says a lot about human nature.
“The Endless Indian Nights”
“How the same Shah who commanded thousands/ to build the Taj Mahal could later be jailed for life/by a single son is something to think about/ during the endless Indian nights.” (Lines 1-4)
The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan, a 16th century Persian Emperor. He had the Taj Mahal built to show his great love for his wife after she died during childbirth. In the years that followed, Jahan became ill and his sons fought over who would take control of the country. Eventually his son Aurangzeb took control and imprisoned Jahan within the Agra fort.
These lines are very powerful because they show the darker side of human nature. Shah Jahan just wanted to show how much he loved his wife so he had the Taj Mahal built. This was a powerful decision as it shows the lengths some people are willing to go to for others. Then his sons started to fight for power and one imprisoned Jahan. This shows that some people are willing to fight against their own family for something as trivial as power. Some people are capable of doing anything to get ahead, even if it means giving up one’s soul to do so.
Information on the Taj Mahal from http://www.thetajmahalindia.com/
Tiffany Robb (1 of 2 posts)
ReplyDeleteFrom “Mother of Nothing” (22-38)
What sinks to the bottom of the pond/comes up with new colors, or not at all./We sank, and there was purple,/voluptuous merging of purple and blue,/a new silence living/ in the houses of our bodies./ Those who wanted and never received,/ who were born without hands,/ who had and then lost; the Turkish mother/after the earthquake/with five silent children lined before her,/ the women of Beirut/bearing water to their bombed out-rooms,/ the fathers in offices/with framed photographs of children on their desks,/and their own private knowledge/of all the hard words.
The line “what sinks to the bottom of the pond/comes up with new colors or not at all” is foreshadowing the next stanza. I think that when you drop something in the pond you don’t know how deep down it is going to go, and whether it will resurface. You watch it going deeper until it completely disappears, and there is nothing you can do This causes a feeling of loss and also uncertainty. The next line alludes to emptiness, “ a new silence living/in the houses of our bodies” I feel Nye is relating this feeling to the children lost by their Turkish mothers in earthquakes. There “are five silent children lined before her”, meaning to the mother their, for lack of a better word, aura is still somehow there. They disappeared to the mother, lost in a bottomless pool but may have (not literally) resurfaced as an apparition she could feel, silent, like ghosts. Her memories may make them real. Also “ the women of Beirut/ bearing water to their bombed-out rooms” are still stuck in their usual daily habits but things have changed after loss, which they are handling by continuing being a caretaker, even if it is of nothing. I’m not sure if “fathers in offices/with framed photographs of children on their desks,/and their own private knowledge/of all the hard words” means that their children have also died and they are playing out their role as bread-winner still, remembering they used to have someone to provide for. This could be the wrong interpretation, but I sense a loss or sadness in the lines about the fathers too.
These lines are full of sorrow, they mark exactly how it feels to lose something or someone and then not knowing what to do with the silence, and with the absence of these things/people. They look to this pond for them to resurface, but it is a pool of darkness. The rest of the poem also is startlingly accurate in describing how after such trauma, you do things differently and try to dull your senses.
tiffany robb (2 of 2 posts)
ReplyDeleteFrom “ The Man Who Makes Brooms” Jerusalem (7-13)
Thumb over thumb, straw over straw,/he will not look at us./ In his stony corner there is barely room/for baskets and thread,/much less the weight of our faces/staring at him from the street./ What he has lost or not lost is his secret.
“Thumb over thumb, straw over straw”, this man is making his brooms all day long. “ He will not look at us”, In this line I picture this man drawn entirely into his work and focused on his repeated motions. He does not have the time nor the interest to focus on other things around him. I think this is the true mark of a hard worker. “ In his stony corner there is barely room/for baskets and thread”, Obviously this man does not have much, and his business is specifically making brooms, nothing else. There is no room for hobby type things, or anyone. “ Much less the weight of our faces/staring at him from the street.” If this man was to take time to look at the people watching him, it would take away from his work. He would also have to take in the emotion in people’s eyes, and by noticing a person it could lead to them introducing themselves, which would take energy and diverted concentration. I see this man as solitary, a person that you wonder what they are thinking, but they keep to themselves. “What he has lost or not lost is his secret” Obviously he must have thoughts and since he tends to his work quietly he is probably thinking all day. These things he shares with no one. He is a figure of mystery, but is promoting this beautiful image of someone passionate about what they do. People look at him as simple because making brooms could be taken as a lowly career. Nye sees that he exerts discipline, strength, and does not give up for a second. Later in the poem, Nye relates his work to a song, which I can see because his repeated movements can be seen in a way lyrical. This also makes me think of him as an artist, which he actually is because he is creating.
In the poem "Advice," Naomi Shihab Nye eloquently connects an elderly person's life to the reader.
ReplyDeleteIn the first stanza, the elderly woman tells her great-great niece that she must plant a tree. She says "Any nut, she says. She says and says again. / She planted her tree in 1936" (1-3). This stanza encourages the reader to define his or life in any way that he or she sees fit. By planting a free, the woman is able to cultivate and maintain her identity for years to come.
The second stanza illustrates the concern and fear of the unknown, which is common in all people. The reader must recognize that "Ahead of us the years loom, forests without histories. / Our hands want to plant something that will bloom tomorrow. / This is too vague, this deep root of ten thousand days" (4-6). It is nearly impossible to implement change in one's life overnight; it takes many days, weeks, months, and even years to create effective change and to create one's identity.
The final stanza in the poem reads "Don't forget, she says, but we are driving away. / Behind us she brushes a leaf from her step, / sinks a little deeper into the soil of sleep / that has been settling beneath her like a pillow since birth" (7-10). These lines demonstrate that everyone, regardless of their place in life, returns to the dust in which they originated. The elderly woman "sinks a little deeper into the soil," which signifies that she is one step closer to passing away and returning back to the earth. Even though she is slowly dying, the reader is able to see that she has been able to nurture an identity for herself that is proud to represent.
In Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Different Ways to Pray" on page 19, in the sixth stanza she writes: "There were those who didn't care about praying. The young ones. The ones who had been to America. They told the old ones, you are wasting your time. Time? - The old ones prayed for the young ones. They prayed for Allah to mend their brains, for the twig, the round moon, to speak suddenly in a commanding tone."
ReplyDeleteIn this stanza Nye is discussing people that Westerners consider "the Other". She discusses the younger generation of Muslim people who have been to America have no use for prayer. This is true because it is common for immigrants of a younger generation to try to fit in with the adopted culture rather than stay with their parents' traditional values. Nye depicts the older generation praying for the salvation of the new generation, praying that they will come to their senses and for "Allah to mend their brains." This poem is important because it shows the differences between the younger and older generations of immigrants and their discovery of identity, very similar to Maxine Hong Kingston and also Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Well the first time I really notice feeling a connection to someone that would normally be deemed other was in "Different Ways to Pray".
ReplyDelete"And occasionally there would be one/ who did none of this,/ the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,/who beat everyone at dominoes,/insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,/and was famous for his laugh." the seventh stanza.
I feel like in popular culture, the old fool is definitely not someone that's respected or listened to but I felt like Nye portrayed Fowzi
as someone that was wise and fun and interesting and definitely a lot more relaxed than anyone else. He seems like someone I'd like
to know and I like that in this case, it's the simple person who is looked up to.
Another poem which I felt helped to connect me to a group of people was the poem "Jerusalem." Throughout the beginning of the poem, I felt like I was hearing about all the things which make the gypsies foreign, but in the last stanza, it seemed as if it were everyone else that was odd.
"At least there were choices,/ not like the sword, which did only one thing,/or a house, which sat in the desert/ after the goats and music had blown away."
To me the part where Nye talks about the house feels like she's saying that traveling constantly, and making the road into a home makes much more sense in a changing world than to stay in one place. If you stay in one place, eventually you'll be alone, which is much more unusual than traveling.
In Nye's poem, Grandfather's heaven, i thought that the last lines of the poem were the most powerful. Nyee states "i hear your studying religion, he said./that how people get confused./keep it simple. Down or up." the directions up and down in the poem interpret to me as heaven and hell. Nye states “Grandma liked me even though my daddy was Moslem./ I think grandpa liked me too/ though he wasn’t sure what to do with it." From my interpretation grandma and grandpa are not Moslem so before grandpa died he wrote a letter to her/him saying keep it simple do you either want to go to heaven or hell. In my opinion I thought that the grandpa was saying if you are Moslem you are going to hell. This poem caught my attention right away because it shows discrimination between religions.
ReplyDeleteIn Nyes poem "The Whole Self" her first three lines are very important. "when i think of the long history of the self/ on its journey to becoming the whole self, i get tired./its a kind of a trip you keep making."
Nye connects this poem to the readers because she is saying that if you look how much time it takes you to find your self, its a never ending journey. Nye is suggesting that the journey to find yourself is a never ending journing for us a human beings. We are all making the journey no matter what kind of race we are.
"Out here it's impossible to be lonely. The land walking beside you is your oldest friend, pleasantly silent, like already you've told the best stories and each of you knows how much the other made up."(11-14) These lines form Nye's poem "At the Seven-Mile Ranch, Comstock, Texas" can be interpreted to referring to American-Indians as the "other" group. American-Indians are known to be very spiritual and refer to their land as being one with themselves. These lines can also be related to the reader because it only refers to the land, in which the reader may feel one with their land as well.
ReplyDeleteIn the poem "Advice" Nye states "My great-great-aunt says to plant a tree. Any nut, she says. She says and says again. She planted her tree in 1936," (1-3). This can be referred to the orientals and their respect for the elderly. The physical respect and the respect for their stories and what they have to bring to the world.
The poem,The Indian in the Kitchen..
ReplyDeleteI really liked this poem especially the lines, "When you bring the tea, limes neatly arranged on a saucer, I try to catch you, the brown valleys of your eyes, so you would know that I am watching, listening.."
I felt like Nye was expressing how an Indian was serving food at a dinner party and no one seemed to care about her. The one person there did and wanted to know her story, about her culture and life. She was not just some servant that walked around with food. She was a perso too with experiences. I think that Nye was just trying to get her readers to look at a person from another culture, in their postion. Or even to care enough to get to know the person and their cultural backgrounds.
“The Art of Disappearing” Pg 29 last verse
ReplyDelete“Walk around feeling like a leaf./Know you could tumble at any second./ Then decide what to do with your time.”
When initially reading this verse I saw immediately how the idea of time is a part of everyone’s life worldwide. Time itself is universal although there are many different ways to keep track of it everyone is on the same planet and time stops for no one. Essentially every single human being on Earth was unable to control their birth and will also be unable to escape death. What makes people unique is how they chose to use their time while alive. The decisions they make and what they do with their life is what’s important and this poem is pretty much saying make sure you spend your life doing what you feel is the best thing to do in any given circumstance, because if not there is no point. So before engaging in an activity make sure it is something worth doing because life is short, dont waste time.